Review and Giveaway: Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli

Most people in the US would probably not have any clue where Bhutan was if you asked them. Heck, if you didn't mention that it was a country, they might not have any clue at all what you were talking about. So for the record, Bhutan is a small Asian country on the eastern end of the Himalayas, bordered by India and China. It is remote and difficult to get to, and that's just if you can afford to pay for the $200 a day tourist tax. It is probably best known for the fact that instead of Gross National Product, Bhutan measures Gross National Happiness. It is also occasionally known for the fact that for many years it did not have television (it does now). Despite these charming (from a Western perspective) eccentricities, it is still a largely unknown country to the average American. But for those of us with a taste for the off the beaten path, it is a place that holds immense appeal. And while I doubt I'll ever manage to get to Bhutan myself, reading about it is the next best thing.

Lisa Napoli was tired of her job at a public radio station in LA, burnt out aand frustrated by technology and its hold over our lives, when she met a man at a party who would change the course of her life forever. Through Sebastian, Napoli was offered an advisory position helping with Bhutan's new, emerging radio station Kuzoo FM. Despite her growing malaise with her job in the US, Napoli embraces this fantastic opportunity, takes a leave of absence from her job, and leaves for the Kingdom of Bhutan just as the country is poised on the edge of enormous changes. Transitioning from a monarchy to a democracy and from a media void to a media rich environment, Bhutan's age old traditions and feel were evolving.

Napoli captures a wonderful, sheltered land and what it feels like to be a visitor there but she doesn't shy away from the harder truths the Bhutanese are facing as well, including the Bhutanese refugees in Nepal, the pull of American music and television, and the urbanization of the young. This is not just a travelogue about the sights and sounds of a foreign place. Napoli offers up slices of Bhutanese history, delves into the changing political scene, details the importance of Buddhism in daily life, and examines the changing customs that govern life in Thimpu.

But what makes this travelogue/memoir so full is that Napoli shares as much about herself on this journey as she does about the people and places in which she immerses herself. When she sets off on her first trip to Bhutan, she is clearly searching for something within herself. What this turns out to be is a peace with who she is and what she is doing with her life. She learns to be completely comfortable in her own skin and it shows in the confidence in her writing.

Her descriptions of Bhutan are vivid and enticing. The people she meets are warm and friendly. Her own search for self is not narcissistic and annoying but matter of fact and approachable. She is clearly changed by her trips to Bhutan and the way she's described it all makes the reader want to go and grow and learn and be welcomed with open arms too. If it's possible to fall in love with a place and a people through a book, then this is the book to make it happen. People who love travelogues will rejoice in this story. Readers who enjoy going along on a spiritual striving and seeing a life transformed will thrill to this read. It is rich and well-written and thoroughly enjoyable.

Now that you are completely intrigued by the book, read an excerpt to get you started.

For information about a charity raising money to send books and school essentials to children in rural Bhutan check out Books to Bhutan.

For more information about Lisa Napoli and the book be sure to visit her website and her blog. You can "like" the book on Facebook and follow Lisa on Twitter as well.


Thanks to Lisa from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

And finally, the giveaway! The publisher is allowing me to give away two copies of the book to US/Canadian residents. But because you all love me and I love you back (and because Lisa came to my town and was totally delightful in person--she has a gift for listening to nervous babbling, never once rolling her eyes as I chatted and chatted and chatted), I also have a signed copy of the book I picked up that I am willing to send anywhere in the world. So that's three copies of the book to give away. Fill out the form below before March 21 for your chance to win.

Review: The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

It is no secret that math has never been "my thing." My children regularly struggle through their math homework without asking me for help. They make disparaging comments about my lack of mathematical ability. What I don't think they understand is that for a very long time, I did quite well in math (geometry beat the confidence right out of me but that's a story for another time). It wasn't so much that I didn't "get" it, I just didn't love it. Numbers have always been quite far down on my list of enjoyable things to ponder. And yet this slight novel about a former math professor who, after suffering a traumatic brain injury, can only hold things in his memory for 80 minutes and the unschooled housekeeper who assumes the care of the man and the cleaning of his small cottage is incredibly fascinating both on the human (character) level and in terms of the math concepts the professor explains to the housekeeper and her small son.

The professor is a mathematical genius and a gifted teacher who lives alone in a small cottage on the grounds of his sister-in-law's house. After a car accident in 1975, he has been unable to retain anything in his memory for more than eighty minutes. The suits he wears flutter with pinned notes reminding him of important things in his life. The most important note, which he wakes to every morning, is that his memory only lasts eighty minutes. Many housekeepers have come and gone in his life until the unnamed housekeeper of the title. She must reintroduce herself to the professor every morning offering him numerical tidbits from her life (her birthdate, her phone number, etc.) to help ground him in the immutable, eternal solidity of numbers even while everything else in his life seems new and confusing on a daily basis.

As the housekeeper settles into her own routine, she introduces her ten year old son, nicknamed Root by the professor because of his head's resemblence to the square root sign, into the small cottage. Root's presence pleases and energizes the professor, who takes to teaching both the housekeeper and Root about the beauty he sees in numbers. He explains prime numbers, amicable numbers, and difficult equations. His explanations are elegant and interesting and strike a cord with the housekeeper, who pushes further on her own. The three of them listen to baseball games, the game a statistician's dream. The housekeeper, the professor, and Root form friendships based on mutual interests and genuine caring despite the professor's inability to remember the other two from day to day.

The story itself is quiet, gentle, and lovely. The writing is carefully meticulous and yet elegant in the way that a complicated mathematical proof would be distilled to its simplest rendering. The theme of time and the fleetingness of memory contrast nicely with the eternal strength of numbers and friendship. There are no pyrotechnics here, just the simple beauty of a well-written, enchanting story. Like the concept the professor explains to the housekeper one day, this novel is easily summed up as amicable.